Introduction

Where This Article Fits

This article provides the core APS account of Process, the analytic projection concerned with how continuity is maintained, reorganised, or re-established despite change. It develops the dynamic dimension of organised persistence while distinguishing Process from the materially realised biological processes through which living organisation is maintained.

APS therefore shares important explanatory concerns with processual approaches to biology without requiring process ontology as its metaphysical foundation. Process is an analytic projection rather than a claim that living systems are fundamentally processes, just as Agency and Scale are analytic projections rather than independent components or levels of biological reality. The article establishes this distinction for subsequent APS treatments of development, repair, regeneration, evolution, temporal organisation, and other cases in which continuity through change becomes an explanatory target.

Biological systems are often described in terms of structure: cells, tissues, organs, and networks. Processes may then be described as events or activities occurring within or between these structures.

This distinction can be useful, but living organisation cannot be understood solely as the persistence of unchanged structures. Living systems undergo continual material turnover, physiological change, development, repair, and reorganisation. The importance of such dynamic continuity has become a major theme in contemporary processual philosophy of biology (Dupré & Nicholson 2018; Nicholson & Dupré 2018).

Structures and processes are therefore biologically interdependent. Membranes must be maintained, components renewed, physiological relations regulated, and damaged organisation repaired or reorganised. Materially realised biological activity contributes to the continuing organisation through which living systems persist.

APS uses Process as the analytic projection concerned with how such continuity is maintained despite change. It does not make Process an entity, causal force, or biological component in addition to the activities and relations being investigated.

Process Beyond Change

In conventional usage, a process may be understood as a sequence of events or activities unfolding through time.

That usage remains legitimate. Biological processes such as metabolism, repair, development, physiological regulation, and signalling are materially realised activities with particular mechanisms and consequences.

Processual approaches to biology go further. They have argued that metabolic turnover, life cycles, ecological interdependence, and other features of living systems motivate understanding biological entities themselves as processes rather than enduring substances (Dupré & Nicholson 2018). Questions of biological identity and persistence have consequently become central to process ontology (DiFrisco 2018).

Recent work extends this processual orientation directly into phylogenetic theory. Kearney and Haber (2026) argue that contemporary phylogeny is better understood as a multidimensional processual system comprising spatial, temporal, and hierarchical dimensions and interacting lineage histories rather than as a single absolute history. They accordingly propose process ontology as a foundation for contemporary phylogenetics. APS can recognise the explanatory importance of historically extended, changing lineage organisation without requiring that stronger ontological conclusion.

APS introduces a related but distinct analytic question. Process asks how continuity is maintained, reorganised, or re-established despite change.

Temporal succession alone is therefore insufficient. Events may follow one another without contributing to the continuing organisation of a living system. Process analysis asks how materially realised activities and relations contribute to continuity through such change.

Process and Processual Biology

APS shares with processual biology an emphasis on turnover, activity, transformation, and the problem of biological persistence. It therefore rejects any picture of living systems as simply static structures whose identity is independent of the activities through which they are maintained.

The agreement does not require complete metaphysical agreement.

Contemporary processual philosophy has developed the stronger proposal that living beings should be understood ontologically as processes rather than substances or things (Dupré & Nicholson 2018; Nicholson & Dupré 2018). APS does not require that conclusion in order to use Process analytically.

For APS, the biological facts and the explanatory projection should be distinguished. Material turnover, repair, metabolism, development, regulation, and other biological processes are materially real. Process, capitalised as an APS term, is the analytic projection that asks how such activities contribute to continuity despite change. The philosophical status of this distinction is developed in Living Reality and Biological Explanation — What Does APS Mean by an Analytic Projection?. That article explains how Process can direct an investigator-selected explanatory question toward materially real biological organisation without treating Process as an independent component, cause, or division of that reality.

APS can therefore take the empirical motivations of processual biology seriously while leaving broader questions about process ontology open. Its immediate methodological commitment is narrower: when continuity through change is the explanatory target, biological explanation should identify the materially realised activities and organisational relations through which that continuity is maintained, reorganised, or re-established.

Process as Organisational Activity

Living organisation depends upon ongoing material activity.

Constraints can shape the possibilities available to biological activity, while biological activities can maintain, modify, regenerate, or reorganise constraints upon which continued organisation depends. Organisational approaches formalise an important version of this relationship through the distinction between processes and constraints and through closure among mutually dependent constraints (Montévil & Mossio 2015; Moreno & Mossio 2015).

The biological work is performed by these materially realised activities, processes, constraints, and organisational relations. Process is the analytic projection through which APS asks how they contribute to continuity despite change.

This distinction prevents the analytic category from being mistaken for an additional biological cause. Process does not itself generate, maintain, or reorganise living systems. It brings into explanatory focus how living organisation accomplishes such maintenance and reorganisation through materially realised activity.

Process and Constraint Closure

Constraint closure concerns organisation in which relevant constraints are mutually sustained through the activities and dependencies of the system (Montévil & Mossio 2015; Moreno & Mossio 2015).

Such organisation cannot persist through temporal passage alone. Constraints, material conditions, and the activities through which they are maintained may themselves require renewal, repair, modification, or reorganisation. Organisational accounts of biological regulation further show how regulatory activity can modulate constitutive organisation in response to changing internal and external conditions (Bich et al. 2016).

Process therefore asks how constraint-closed organisation is maintained or re-established through change. The answer must identify the materially realised activities and dependency relations through which this occurs.

Process does not itself enact constraint closure. Nor does the place of a relation within APS establish its causal importance. Relevant dependencies must be materially specified and assessed for the biological target under investigation.

Process, Agency, and Scale

Agency, Process, and Scale are complementary analytic projections of one viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.

  • Agency concerns what living systems do.
  • Process concerns how continuity is maintained despite change.
  • Scale concerns where persistence is organised across spatial and temporal extents.

These are analytic projections rather than components of reality. They are not independent causes, entities, domains, dimensions, or hierarchical levels that subsequently interact.

Their distinction reflects different explanatory questions that can be asked about the same materially realised living organisation.

An explanatory target may make one, two, or all three projections relevant. APS does not assume that every biological explanation requires all three, and the relevance of a projection must be established by the question being investigated.

Process and Viability

Living systems persist only while conditions compatible with their continued organisation are maintained or re-established.

Material biological activities such as metabolism, physiological regulation, development, repair, and behavioural adjustment can contribute to maintaining or reorganising those conditions. Organisational accounts of regulation provide detailed examples of how biological control can contribute to maintenance under perturbation without treating regulation as an abstract force acting independently of its material implementation (Bich et al. 2016).

Process asks how such activities contribute to continuity through change.

Viability and Process therefore answer different questions within APS. Viability concerns conditions under which continued organisation can succeed or fail. Process concerns how living organisation maintains, loses, reorganises, or re-establishes continuity as those conditions and the system itself change through time.

Process is not the means by which maintenance occurs. The means are the materially realised biological processes, constraints, interactions, and organisational relations identified by the relevant explanation.

Process, Mechanism, and Organisation

Taking biological process seriously does not require treating mechanistic explanation as inadequate.

Mechanistic approaches characteristically explain phenomena by identifying organised entities and activities that produce them (Machamer, Darden & Craver 2000). Such explanations can therefore be dynamic and materially specific rather than merely descriptions of static structure.

The organisational and mechanistic perspectives can also be complementary. Work connecting autonomy theory with mechanistic explanation argues that organisational questions about self-maintenance can guide investigation while mechanisms specify the activities through which such organisation is materially realised (Bich & Bechtel 2021).

APS adopts the same methodological restraint. Process does not replace mechanism. Where a mechanistic explanation adequately answers the biological question, APS does not require its reconstruction. Process becomes relevant when the explanatory target specifically concerns how the activities identified by such explanations contribute to continuity, reorganisation, or recovery through change.

Process Across Spatial and Temporal Extents

Biological processes can occur across different spatial and temporal extents.

Molecular interactions may contribute to physiological organisation. Physiological activities may participate in organismal regulation. Development unfolds across substantial portions of an organism’s lifetime. Ecological relations may alter conditions relevant to persistence, while evolutionary change extends across generations.

These facts do not imply that scales themselves interact, coordinate biological activity, or exercise causal influence.

Where organisation extending beyond a local boundary alters local activity, explanation should identify the materially implemented constraints, interactions, and conditions through which that alteration occurs.

Process and Scale therefore ask distinguishable questions. Process asks how continuity is maintained despite change. Scale asks where the persistence relevant to the explanandum is organised across spatial and temporal extents.

Both may be relevant to a particular explanation, but neither their joint relevance nor a wider explanatory extent should be assumed in advance. Additional spatial or temporal extent is warranted when the materially realised relations it includes make an explanatory difference to the target.

Why Process Matters

Process helps APS formulate a specific family of explanatory questions:

  • How is continuity maintained despite continual material and organisational change?
  • Which biological activities maintain, renew, or reorganise conditions required for persistence?
  • How can organisation remain continuous when components and structures change?
  • Under what conditions is continuity maintained, transformed, re-established, or lost?

These questions do not make structural or mechanistic explanation secondary. Structural, compositional, mechanistic, developmental, physiological, evolutionary, mathematical, and other explanations may each be sufficient for the biological targets they address.

Process becomes relevant where the explanatory target specifically concerns how living organisation continues or reorganises through change.

Conclusion

Living systems persist through materially realised activity rather than through the invariance of all their components or structures.

Components are renewed, constraints maintained or reorganised, physiological relations regulated, and damaged organisation repaired or re-established. Processual and organisational approaches have independently made the biological significance of such dynamic maintenance increasingly explicit (Montévil & Mossio 2015; Dupré & Nicholson 2018).

APS uses Process to investigate how this continuity is accomplished.

Process is therefore not what happens to life, nor is it a force or activity through which life exists. It is the analytic projection concerned with how continuity is maintained despite change.

The distinction is analytic; the biological activities, processes, constraints, interactions, and organisational relations through which continuity is maintained are materially real.

TTogether with Agency and Scale, Process provides one analytic projection through which the same viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation can be investigated. Which of these projections contributes to an explanation depends upon the biological target under investigation.

Explanatory Architecture

Central Question

How is the continuity of living organisation maintained, reorganised, or re-established despite ongoing biological change?

Architectural Role

This Core article establishes Process as the APS analytic projection concerned with how continuity is maintained despite change. It distinguishes that analytic projection from the materially realised biological activities, processes, constraints, and organisational relations through which continuity is maintained, reorganised, or re-established.

Builds On

  • What Is APS?
  • What Is Life? A Biological Question Revisited
  • Agency as the Defining Activity of Life
  • Viability
  • Biological Organisation
  • Constraint Closure
  • Organised Persistence

Develops Into

  • Temporal Organisation and Organised Persistence
  • Development
  • Evolution
  • Regeneration
  • Repair
  • Morphogenesis
  • Biological Explanation
  • Agency, Process, and Scale
  • How is continuity maintained despite continual biological change?
  • How are biological constraints maintained, modified, or regenerated through materially realised activity?
  • How does Process differ from process ontology?
  • How does Process differ from mechanism?
  • How does Process contribute to the analysis of organised persistence?
  • How are Agency, Process, and Scale related within APS?

Position within APS

Process is one of three complementary analytic projections through which APS investigates viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation. Agency concerns what living systems do; Process concerns how continuity is maintained despite change; Scale concerns where persistence is organised across spatial and temporal extents.

These are analytic projections directed toward one materially realised living organisation rather than independent components, causes, entities, dimensions, or levels. Their relevance is target-sensitive: APS does not assume that every biological explanation requires all three.

Corpus Significance

This article provides the canonical article-level treatment of the Process projection. It establishes the distinction between Process as an analytic projection and the materially realised biological processes through which continuity is maintained, while situating APS in relation to processual philosophy, organisational biology, and mechanistic explanation. It therefore controls downstream uses of Process without making Process a separate biological cause, an ontological commitment to process metaphysics, or a universally required explanatory category.